California State Assembly Regarding the 7-Year Statute

The Future of Music Coalition (FMC) supports the Recording Artist Coalition
(RAC) and AFTRA who are calling for the repeal of the 1987 amendment to
Labor Code Section 2855 which singled out recording artists to be treated
differently than all other persons rendering personal services in the
state of California. The amendment plainly discriminates against those
artists and subjects them to be bound to contracts for periods that could
be substantially in excess of seven years. It should be repealed.

Any serious examination of the labor and contract practices must consider
the fact that the music industry in America is fundamentally broken. In
1999, less than 1 percent of the total number of albums released sold
more than 10,000 copies (1). Commercial radio airplay is often sold to
the highest bidder through a shadowy network of independent radio
promoters,(2) while attempts to create new non-commercial Low Power
FM stations have been gutted by Congress(3). The dreams of stardom chased
by many are met head on with the sad reality that an estimated 75 percent
of releases from major labels are not even currently in print, leaving
artists with a huge debt to the record companies that they have no means
to pay back.

The mechanism that props up and establishes the legal framework of this
failed model is the standard industry contract. Attached you will find
the FMCs working critique of several of the standard major label
industry clauses. While we are not arguing that these contractual clauses
are illegal or should be necessarily be legislated as such, we are submitting
this critique here as a means to shed light on the major label working
environment which leaves an estimated 99.6 percent of artists in debt
to their record labels. Repealing the 1987 amendment to Labor Code Section
2855 would give many of these artists a chance to move past these imbalanced
deals and to bring the value of their artist labor back into the marketplace.

Who We Are

The Future of Music Coalition is a not-for-profit collaboration between
leading independent musicians and experts from the worlds of technology,
public policy and intellectual property law. The FMC seeks to educate
the media, policymakers, and the public about music / technology issues,
while also bringing together key stakeholders in an effort to come up
with creative solutions to some of the challenges in this space. The FMC
also aims to identify and promote innovative business models that will
help independent musicians and the public benefit from new technologies.

We firmly believe that the music industry as it exists today is, at a
very basic level, anti-artist, and that any serious examination of a digital
future must take into account the structures in place in our analog present.
While the final solutions to the challenges in this space will be driven
in many ways by technology and the market, there are a number of critical
policy decisions in front of Congress that could make a significant difference
in the lives of artists. The Future of Music Coalition remains eager to
work with any organization that shares our concern for improving the conditions
for artists in these exciting times.